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House Republicans voted Thursday to pass the American Health Care Act their answer to ObamaCare.

The bill has gone through some changes since an earlier version was pulled from the floor in March in the face of flagging support.

Heres whats the bill does:

-Ends tax penalties, under the original Affordable Care Act, for individuals who dont buy insurance coverage and larger employers who dont offer coverage. Instead, insurers would apply a 30 percent surcharge to customers who've let coverage lapse for more than 63 days in the past year.

-Ends tax increases on higher-earning people and a range of industry groups including insurers, drug makers and medical device manufacturers.

-Cuts the Medicaid program for low-income people and lets states impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients. Forbids states that haven't already expanded Medicaid to do so. Changes Medicaid from an open-ended program that covers beneficiaries' costs to one that gives states fixed amounts of money annually.

-Overhauls insurance subsidy system from one based largely on incomes and premium costs to a system of tax credits. The credits would rise with customers ages and, like the subsidies, could be used toward premium costs.

-Lets states get federal waivers allowing insurers to charge older customers higher premiums than younger ones by as much as they'd like. Obama's law limits the difference to a 3-1 ratio. States also can get waivers exempting insurers from providing consumers with required coverage of specified health services, and from Obama's prohibition against insurers charging higher premiums to people with pre-existing health problems, but only if the person has had a gap in insurance coverage.

-States could only get the latter waivers if they have mechanisms like high-risk pools that are supposed to help cover people with serious, expensive-to-treat diseases. A newly added provision would give another $8 billion over five years to help states finance their high-risk pools. Despite criticism that the waivers strip protections, House Speaker Paul Ryans office maintains that since states that take the waivers would have to set up the high-risk pools, insurance companies cannot deny you coverage based on pre-existing conditions.

-Blocks federal payments to Planned Parenthood for a year.

-Retains requirement that family policies cover grown children to age 26.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

See more here:
Republican health care bill: What's in it? | Fox News

Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett visits the exhibit floor in Omaha, Neb., Saturday, where company subsidiaries display their products during the annual shareholders meeting. Nati Harnik/AP hide caption

Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett visits the exhibit floor in Omaha, Neb., Saturday, where company subsidiaries display their products during the annual shareholders meeting.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett fielded questions at the annual shareholders meeting for his company Berkshire Hathaway. He offered thoughts and insights on everything from Republicans voting to repeal Obamacare, to the Wells Fargo scandal, to how artificial intelligence and technology might reshape America. Here are some highlights:

Repealing Obamacare is "a huge tax cut for guys like me"

When asked about the bill Republicans in Congress just voted to pass to repeal and replace Obamacare, Buffett signaled his distaste for a tax cut provision. Obamacare pays for health care for Americans in part by taxing wealthier people. The Republican bill scraps that tax on the wealthy.

And Buffett has apparently done the math here. If the Republican bill had been law last year, he said, "my federal taxes would have gone down 17 percent last year, so it's a huge tax cut for guys like me."

"That is in the law that was passed a couple days ago," he added. "Anybody with $250,000 a year of adjusted gross income and a lot of investment income is going to have a huge tax cut."

In the past, Buffett has bristled at tax policy that he sees as favoring the wealthy famously saying it's not fair that he pays taxes at a lower rate than his secretary.

The medical cost "tapeworm"

Buffett said at the meeting that health care costs have become a bigger issue for American businesses than taxes.

He said if you go back to about 1960, corporate taxes were about 4 percent of GDP and now they're about 2 percent of GDP. At that time, healthcare was 5 percent of GDP and now it's 17 percent of GDP. "So when American business talks about taxes strangling our competitiveness," he said, "they're talking about something that as a percentage of GDP has gone down from 4 to 2." Meanwhile, medical costs have exploded. "So medical costs are the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness," he said.

He argued against the tax system crippling competitiveness "or anything of the sort." He also noted that other developed countries appear to have found better ways to contain medical costs.

Wells Fargo's "big mistake" in its banking scandal

Wells Fargo had a sales structure that clearly led employees to do bad things, according to Buffet. "But the main problem was that they didn't act when they learned about it," he said. "It's bad enough having a bad system, but they didn't act."

Former Wells Fargo workers have told NPR that they called the bank's ethics line and the bank did nothing. Buffett's company ethics line is actively used by workers, he says, so he's sure that Wells Fargo got reports of wrongdoing. He said it's true that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but "a pound of cure promptly applied is worth a ton of cure that's delayed. Problems don't go away."

Wells Fargo responded to Buffett's remarks before the end of the day's meeting, saying in a statement that the bank has taken "decisive action to fix the problems." Wells Fargo also said it's created a new "Office of Ethics, Oversight and Integrity to centralize the handling of internal investigations, complaints oversight, and sales practices oversight."

Why geckos don't like driverless cars

In response to a question about the impact of driverless cars, trucks and trains, Buffett said they'd not only be a threat to trucking and railroad businesses, but the insurance industry too.

"If driverless cars became pervasive, it would only be because they were safer and that would mean that the overall economic cost of auto-related losses had gone down and that would drive down the premium income of Geico," Buffet said referring to the auto insurance company owned by Berkshire.

"Autonomous vehicles widespread would hurt us." But, he added, "I think they may be a long way off."

Life lessons

When asked about reflections and lessons learned in his long life, Warren Buffett referenced Charlie Munger, the 93-year-old vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, who says, "All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there."

But on a more serious note, Buffett says he's gotten a lot of joy in life out of teaching other people things. So, he said, if people remembered him as being a good teacher, he would be OK with that.

The rest is here:
The 'Oracle of Omaha' Condemns Republican Health Care Bill At Berkshire Meeting - NPR

A congressman who voted in favor of the American Health Care Act, the partys best hope for repealing Obamacare, infuriated constituents and audience members at a town hall event Friday night after declaring that nobody dies because they dont have access to health care.

Rep. Ral Labrador, a four-term Idaho Republican who is considered a potential candidate for the governors mansion next year, made the comment roughly 24 hours after the House of Representatives passed the bill with only a single vote to spare, in response to a question from a constituent concerned that the bill would harm recipients of Medicaid.

You are mandating people on Medicaid to accept dying, the audience member said at a town hall meeting at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. You are making a mandate that will kill people.

Labrador interrupted the woman, calling her allegations indefensible.

No one wants anybody to die," Labrador said. You know, that line is so indefensible. Nobody dies because they dont have access to health care.

Labrador, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, was immediately met with a chorus of boos.

Although the relationship between insurance coverage and overall health is more complicated than one might thinkaspects of class, lifestyle, age, genetics, and ZIP code represent major confounding variablesa 2009 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that working-age uninsured Americans face a 40 percent higher risk of dying than those with insurance. The study linked roughly 45,000 deaths annually to a lack of access to health care.

Under the terms of the proposed bill, states would be allowed to apply for waivers from coverage of a wide range of essential health benefitsincluding pre-existing conditionsin order to offer lower-cost plans.

Until the Congressional Budget Office releases an analysis of the AHCAs potential impactheretofore considered a customary, if not necessary requirement before voting on major legislationits difficult to say how many people would lose their insurance coverage under the Republican plan. When the first iteration of the bill was scored in March, the CBO found that 24 million would become uninsured within a decade of that bills passage.

In a statement to The Daily Beast, Labrador admitted that his answer wasn't very elegant.

During ten hours of town halls, one of my answers about health care wasnt very elegant, Labrador said. I was responding to a false notion that the Republican health care plan will cause people to die in the streets, which I completely reject. In a lengthy exchange with a constituent, I explained to her that Obamacare has failed the vast majority of Americans. In the five-second clip that the media is focusing on, I was trying to explain that all hospitals are required by law to treat patients in need of emergency care regardless of their ability to pay and that the Republican plan does not change that.

Labrador also posted on Facebook that it was a privilege to attend the town hall.

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It was my privilege to spend two hours today in Lewiston fielding questions from my constituents, many of them about our efforts to provide quality health care to all Americans at an affordable and sustainable cost.

Continued here:
Republican Congressman: 'Nobody Dies' From Lack Of Access to Health Care - Daily Beast

A liberal journalist went on a Twitter tirade late Friday over the Republican plan to replace Obamacare, calling for family members of Republicans who voted for the bill in the House to die.

Kurt Eichenwald, a senior writer for Newsweek, decried the American Health Care Act in a Twitter rant on Friday. He said he hopes that every Republican congressman who voted for Trumpcare has a family member get a long term condition, then lose their health insurance and die. Image source: screenshot

Eichenwald added that he wants Republicans who voted for the bill to feel its alleged effects in their own families:

When challenged why he was wishing ill upon the families of Republicans, Eichenwald doubled down. He told a Twitter user that he wants GOP congressman to be tortured because they only gain empathy when something bad happens to them.

Because I want them to be tortured. GOPrs only gain empathy when they are touched by the consequences, never before, Eichenwald wrote.

Eichenwald added in reply to another user: I wish it on the ppl who chose it for me. Why should they not feel the consequences of their inhumanity?

Eichenwald later explained that part of his rage stemmed from Republican congressmen allegedly celebrating the passage of the Obamacare repeal bill.

They want to drink beer celebrating killing people? Then it should be their loved ones who die, he tweeted.

However, the allegations that GOP congressman celebrated the bills passing with beer isnt true at all, despite claims by politicians, media members and celebrities.

Still, in a long, 482-word statement to the Daily Caller, Eichenwald expressed his outrage with Republicans, who he said need to feel the effects of the AHCA.

He said:

The only way people incapable of empathy will understand reality is when they face it. So yes, to save millions, I think the people who inflicted these consequences on strangers should see the consequences up close and personal.

The goprs in congress didnt just send out a tweet wishing for me to face my own death. They actually voted to do it. If people dont give a damn about the consequences of what they do, they should face those consequences. They shouldnt all be inflicted on strangers.

I want them to feel what millions of us are feeling tonight fear, desperation, a knowledge that any moment could start the countdown to our deaths.

To be noted, Eichenwald later deleted his original tweet calling for Republican family members to die. He rewrote his tweet with the same message using softer language.

Millions like me tonight dont know if GOP health bill will pass & kill them. I hope those who vote for it someday face same anguish we do, he wrote.

The health care bill passed by the House on Thursday is not yet law. The Senate hasnt yet heard the bill, and they are expected to pass their own version of the bill, complicating the law making process.

Read more:
Liberal journalist blows up over GOP health care plan, calls for Republican family members to die - TheBlaze.com

New York Times

Republican Party, Emmanuel Macron: Your Friday Evening Briefing New York Times That was the question the morning after the bill's passage. Democrats say they'll capitalize on anger over the bill to take back the House in 2018. That's why they sang Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye) during the vote. And they were speaking from ...

Read the original:
Republican Party, Emmanuel Macron: Your Friday Evening Briefing - New York Times